


Empty Jars (That's What We Are)

by Lise



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Aftermath, Brainwashing, Gen, Natasha's really pretty angry about this, Post-Black Widow Hunt, Psychological Trauma, highly opinionated!!!, the author has never written comics fic before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not the first time Natasha's been twist-bent-molded into something she's not. It probably won't be the last, either. Natasha post #14, who has had it up to here with this brainwashing bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Jars (That's What We Are)

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly: I have really enjoyed reading the Winter Soldier run. Secondly: I'm not going to say Natasha was fridged in this arc, because I don't want people getting mad at me. But Natasha was kind of fridged, if we go by the definition not including death, of female characters taking harm to cause suffering/character development for male characters. Of course this is understandable, to some degree, in the setting of Winter Soldier as a comic - it is, after all, Bucky's comic. 
> 
> However, leaving Natasha recently de-programmed, lacking her memories of her former lover, and undoubtedly pretty well screwed up by the experiences of the Black Widow Hunt arc...was not something I could just do. 
> 
> So this happened, on a three hour train ride. I only have a few regrets. Mostly they are the fact that this probably will not have a sequel (in which, hypothetically, Natasha would chew Bucky out for making decisions for her). 
> 
> Enjoy, I hope? And I hope I have not - as a newbie to comics - royally fucked up any characterization.

There’s a feeling, one she knows all too well by now, of waking up from brainwashing. Returning to yourself, as it were. It’s not unlike the hypnic jerk of falling into sleep, or the brief feeling in the brain when the trigger words activate and you go from person to weapon.

“Welcome back, Natasha,” they say to her, smiles uneasy and eyes wary, as the pieces of her fall back into place and she wakes up to herself again. Once again she’s been bent and twisted into the shape someone else wanted, everything about her a weapon to be used for someone else’s war.

It’s not new.

Sometimes she wonders if she’s ever herself, if there ever was a _real Natalia Romanova_ or if she’s spent all the years of her life being someone else’s idea of her, and every time she wakes up it’s just another version, another iteration of the person other people want her to be.

She’s briefed on what she needs to know. They scan her one more time, for any leftover effects. SHIELD takes care of the men she killed, covers the whole thing up neatly so it never happened. As far as the world’s concerned, she’s still the Black Widow, Avenger, and that’s all they need to know.

It’s not the dead men that bother her. They _do_ (Sitwell, god) but Natasha’s long ago given up looking back and regretting. Keep moving forward. It’s how you survive, sometimes; how she’s survived. The feeling that nags at her is one of wrongness, and a small, nasty part of her wonders if SHIELD changed anything, putting her back together. If they didn’t, maybe, take out a few pieces they’d rather not have, or put in a few that weren’t there before.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to her. She’d never know, either; there’s no way to tell, really, what in her head is really hers. Not anymore, if there ever was. Good programming doesn’t give itself away, and her mind’s been passed through so many hands she thinks of it sometimes like a worn-out rag, battered by too much use.

The mental image makes her feel sick.

They release her from quarantine eventually, send her home, and she goes without talking to anyone. She knows they’re waiting for her, Steve and Logan and Clint and the rest, but right now Natasha doesn’t think she wants to see them. Right now what she wants is to go home and slip into pajamas and sleep for a week.

Try to remember what it feels like to be human.

* * *

There’s a dance studio down the street from her apartment. Natasha goes, about six days after, around midnight. It’s child’s play for her to break into the building, and she spends the next two hours practicing ballet. Her body still remembers the moves, and even if it was never anything but a lie, it feels good to dance. She feels a little easier, a little calmer, when she stops, breathing slightly elevated, and turns.

Someone’s watching her.

She goes for her gun before her next exhale. “Hey,” he says, holding up his hands, and she recognizes that voice. “It’s just me, don’t shoot, huh?”

Natasha exhales. “Dammit, Murdock – you should know better than to sneak up on me.”

“Someone broke into a ballet studio in the middle of the night. Had to make sure there wasn’t any funny business going on.” He takes a step toward her. She takes a step back. He stops. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” he says after a moment, her sometime lover, though not for a while now. He’s found other women.

“I’m fine,” she says, clipped, the answer she’ll give everyone. The things in her head aren’t things she can talk about with just anyone. They’ve all of them been bent and used and fucked with in various ways, but this – she doesn’t think they’ll understand. How it feels to be turned against yourself. How it feels to not know anymore if there’s anything real in you at all.

“Natasha…” The man sometimes known as Daredevil sounds like he’s trying to be gentle. With her. She narrows her eyes in his direction.

“Don’t. I’m fine. Back on my feet. Good as new.” She hoists her bag on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t have come. Or at least waited until normal hours.”

“You haven’t talked to anyone in six days. People are worried about you.”

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that she’s not alone anymore, that there are people relying on her. People that will come for her when things go south. People who make sure she has a life to come back to no matter how many times it’s stolen from her. She should have seen them before now. It’s just…

“I know.” Natasha breathes out through her nose. “I will…I’ve just needed some time.” She starts back toward the door. It’s two-thirty in the morning and she needs to sleep, even if her brain is buzzing now and she knows she’ll be lying in bed playing mental games with herself for hours.

“Natasha,” he starts again. “I understand…”

“Don’t,” she says, without turning around, and with new vehemence. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t.” _You don’t understand,_ she doesn’t yell at him, though it bubbles up in her chest for a moment and she wants to. _You don’t know._

She’s suddenly sure, _forcefully_ sure, so much that it almost makes her head ache, that there is someone who does, that there’s someone she’s been waiting to talk to, and that’s why she’s been keeping to herself, because there’s someone else she has to talk to first, but as for who-

It’s not there.

Maybe it’s not even real. Maybe that’s a fiction too.

Murdock doesn’t try to stop her leaving. Natasha walks back to her apartment alone.

She’s not wrong about the sleep. It takes a long time to find her, and when it does, it’s fitful and restless. Full of vague dreams, or maybe memories. Leo tries to touch her, and it feels wrong, but she can’t remember why.

* * *

Clint embraces her awkwardly, and if Jessica watches her a little too closely for the duration with something like wariness, her smile and “hey, Natasha” were warm enough. She can’t really blame her, anyway. Jessica’s been dealt too many rough hands to trust easy.

They’re genuinely glad to see her. The warmth that makes her feel is a rare thing. Logan offers her a cold beer and a “good to have you back, kid.” There’s familiarity and comfortable sarcasm, teasing between family members. It sets her at ease more than she expected to. None of them treat her differently, or carefully, like she’s somehow fragile, and that’s good too.

It’s Steve, she realizes gradually, who watches her with a frown between his eyebrows, keeping a little at a distance. She corners him eventually, once she can get away a little. “All right,” she says, “spill. What is it?”

Steve tries just a little too hard to look like he’s not hiding anything. “What is what?”

“Whatever’s bugging you,” Natasha says, almost patiently. “You’ve been giving me this look.” Like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, she doesn’t say. Like you expect me to turn again.

“It’s not important,” Steve says, and then shakes his head. “I guess I’m…still upset about Bucky’s dying again.” He shoots her a sideways glance then, like he expects her to say something. There’s a twinge, bright and hot and painful, behind her eyes. Bucky. She knew that name, _knows_ -

She blinks hard. “I’m sorry…who?”

“James Barnes?” Steve says, strangely hopeful, almost desperate. It _hurts._ Deep in her head, it hurts, but there’s something there, she’s sure of it – _or is there, is it just another_ _implanted memory_ –

She sways, and catches herself against a wall, feels a sudden searing flash of anger gone as quickly as it had come and she doesn’t know where it comes from. “Whoa,” someone says – Clint, she thinks - supporting her as she wavers. “Easy there, what’s…”

She shakes her head, trying to clear it. “I don’t know what just-”

“Cap?” That’s Jessica’s voice, almost sharp. “What were you-”

“I think I’d better go home,” Natasha says. Her stomach is turning flips, and she straightens up slowly, pushes Clint carefully away. “You kids have fun without me.” She heads for the door, trying to think carefully.

“What did you do,” she hears someone ask loudly, “what did you say to her, were you talking about-”

Natasha closes her ears and heads out, not quite stumbling. It’s cold out, but she walks all the way home anyway.

* * *

“Is there anything left?” she demands. The SHIELD doctor looks faintly nervous.

“I’m sorry, I don’t-”

The step Natasha takes forward is not wholly voluntary. “Is there anything left of what they did to me?” she says again. “Is there any possibility that there’s still some programming left-”

The man’s eyes dart to the side. He’s about to lie to her, or considering it. “No,” he says, a little too resolute. Committing to the lie, then. It’s almost brave; she knows how she must look right now, a little crazed. “No, there’s nothing left-”

“Are you _really_ going to try to lie to me?” she cuts in, and the man looks like he wants to hide behind his clipboard. It will not, she could have told him, offer adequate protection. She takes another step in and he takes a step back, runs into a wall. “ _Tell me what-”_

“Natasha.”

It’s Fury’s voice. She takes a moment, half certain that when she turns the switch will flip in her brain and she’ll go back from person to weapon again. She does turn eventually, though, slowly, and there’s no switch. She looks levely at Fury, can’t help but think that they’d usually send Sitwell to deal with her. He’s a better choice than Fury.

But Sitwell’s dead. She did that.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Director,” she says, keeping her voice level with an effort. “Something you don’t want me to know. What is it?”

“I’d feel better about telling you that if you looked a little less like a gun about to go off, Widow.” Natasha doesn’t move, and only tries a little to smooth out her expression.

“What did you do?” she asks, after a moment. “Slip something in or take something out? Or just leave some of what Novokov did to me because it suited you-”

“What makes you so sure that we did anything?” Fury’s calm may be manufactured, but it frustrates her nonetheless. That’s the thing, isn’t it, and it’s that nagging doubt at the back of her mind, _maybe it’s just you. How can you know there’s something wrong when you hardly know what’s right to begin with-_

“Don’t give me that.” She can feel her body trying to shake and holds it still. _Who is Bucky Barnes? What does that name mean to me?_ “I’m just about done with people mucking around in my head and thinking they can make me whatever they want-” She cuts off. “—what is it you’re not saying?”

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Agent Romanov,” Fury says, choosing his words, she can see, with care. “But I don’t know what you expect me to say. You’ve barged in here and threatened one of our men. Do I need to take you off active duty or are you going to calm down and find your own way out?”

“No,” she says, after a sick moment’s hesitation. “Sir.” Her jaw keeps trying to clench. She’s angry again, so _angry_ and not sure why, there’s something here but he won’t tell her, no one will tell her, because it’s just your _mind_ Natasha and why shouldn’t we have every right to do what we want with it, why shouldn’t we get to mold you into whatever we want you to be, that’s all you’ll ever be, a tool in men’s hands and the hands change but you’re still their weapon-

She pushes it down. Pushes it all down.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tightly, “for any disturbance I’ve caused.” She brushes past Fury on her way to the door.

 _Maybe it’s better not to know,_ she thinks, on her way out. _Maybe you can just let it go._

(Natasha was never much good at letting things go.)

* * *

She paces back and forth in her apartment, the anger simmering just under her skin. She’s so tired of this, of all of it. Of being used, of being unmade and remade, of never knowing what’s true and what isn’t, never being sure her mind’s her own.

Natasha keeps circling back to that name. _Bucky Barnes._ It hurts her head every time, makes her stomach turn, and she knows it’s stupid to keep pushing, but there’s something there, something she needs to know. Because there’s something there that’s _her,_ that’s _hers._

_One thing that’s real._

It’ll come, she tells herself. It’ll come. The pieces will fall back together. She has a strong mind, a strong will. That’s what it means to be the Black Widow. They break you apart, you put yourself together again. And she will.

There are three messages on her answering machine, one from Clint, one from Logan, one from Steve. She listens just long enough to hear who they’re from, and then leaves them alone.

She slips into her room and grabs her dance shoes, the bag with her clothes in it. The dance studio will be closed by now, empty.

Maybe that’s the closest she can get to being herself, alone in empty rooms. Dancing for herself and nobody else. They made her a ballerina, she’s always told herself, but now it’s her choice to keep it up. How sure can she be of that, though, how certain…

This is what makes her angriest: the people who did this to her, Nokorov, the Red Room scientists, all of them – they never thought about it. They never thought about what it would be like to be made of false memories and lies, to never know true from false.

They did this, made a weapon to fight their war, and never thought of the woman underneath.  Nokorov thought nothing of turning her inside out to serve his purposes. A means to an end.

It’s been a week and a half (forty years) since she woke up, and Natasha’s still not sure she’s remembered how to be human.


End file.
